SFGA, Unbelievable...

Corporate Greed at its finest. 25 for parking, way overboard prices for games and food, and the product placement. Good Lord the product placement. They practically rub in it your face. I'm surprised they don't change the name of Raging Bull to Gamefly or Vertical Velocity to Got 2 B Glued. Instead of being creative and making new coaster names, they used Goliath again and so on. The staff and service is second rate. It took a freakin hr just to get into the park. I get their trying to be safe with the detectors, but geez, there has to be a better way. Slow getting coasters out, and that flash pass is a joke. Me and the wife were buckled into a ride and got kicked out of our seat 3 times for a flash pass person. Blew me away. Also they love to say cleanest park in America! Yea, absolutely not. The bathrooms were filthy and the parking lot looked like a dumpster with the trash everywhere. The coasters are pretty good, especially Goliath, but I won't be going back to a Six Flags park for another 15 years probably. I'll stick with Cedar Point and Cedar Fair parks.

Good for you.

I'll be headed back to Great America this weekend for the umpteenth time this year, and I live 6 hours away.

I kind of like the product placement and advertisement. It adds to the experience, and stimulates the senses. Great America is probably my favorite Six Flags park, with Great Adventure right behind it.

Well good for you...enjoy that second rate amusement park.

What?! Corporations are greedy?

Could someone bring me my smelling salts?

SkyhawkRaptorXL-200 said:

Well good for you...enjoy that second rate amusement park.

LOL. Look at you, getting your panties in a wad.

It's all about having fun. I've said it numerous times, and I'm going to say it again. If you're no longer having fun, maybe you need to change hobbies.

In my 70 or so visits to SFoT over the past 10 years, I've never seen anyone who was buckled get bumped for FlashPass. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I'd suspect you're misunderstanding something else that did happen or you're exaggerating.

I didn't get bumped out of my seat on my recent trip to SF because I had the Flashpass. :p

But seriously though, my SFGadv visit wasn't as bad as you are saying your SFGAm visit was. My only real problem was that the park looked worn out and a few of the major rides that I really really wanted to ride were closed. Well, that, and the parking fee is just ridiculous. Overall, the park is a terrible value for the money, in my opinion.

But it was clean and most of the staff was very helpful, except for the lady standing behind the guest service window.

I'm not planning to go back to my closest SF park for many years either, so I know what you mean, but I do think you are exaggerating at least a little.

About advertising, I'm the kind of person who mutes the TV when commercials are on. In the future, I foresee after paying parking and admission, you will have to watch an advertisement of a Six Flags partnering product and then answer a questionnaire about the advertisement in order to be allowed to ride each ride. lol

I've never seen someone made to get out of their seat for Flashpass. I call shenanigans.

Can't wait till I go to Great America Labor Day weekend.

While obviously everyone experiences things differently, I do think there is a segment of people, myself included, who are turned off from the excessive amount of in-park advertising that takes place at this park today. I support the park's right to make money and even think in-park advertising has a place but I question whether the strong focus on advertising will hinder the long-term guest experience and hurt the park's bottom line.

Banners advertising hair gel hastily strung up on buildings, pop-up signs with credit card offers littering the midway, large billboards with new minivans plopped over themed vistas, radio ads playing on top of different TV ads. A park map stuffed with flyers for outlet mall sales. I estimate you are hit with an ad every thirty to fifty feet or so. I call all this "visual clutter." I'm sure the execs call it "free money." The question is, will it bite them in the end?

To those who defend the park for the extra revenue it brings in, I'm curious where you draw the line. Am I off base here? When does it become too much? Or is there no such thing as too much?

Here's where I draw the line:

Would you rather pay $90 to get in or $50-60 and have ads?

Much like TV and the internet, advertising becomes ubiquitous at parks and as long as they keep prices down I couldn't care less about how much of it there is.

I have never seen anyone unbuckled for a flash pass person either.

Anyway, as for in-park advertising, the one thing at Great America that bothers me are the people from Key Lime Cove... they chase you around the Midways trying to sell you nights at the hotel.. I did not appreciate that much at all.

I don't love Great America, but it is the closest "Big" park to me these days and I enjoy my couple visits a year.

It becomes too much when you decide to stop going. If there's a level of advertising that is such a turn-off that you no longer patronize the business then that's where the line is, for you.

But then if they reinvest in the park to bring you a brand new roller coaster, maybe that's enough to tip the scales back the other way.

SkyhawkRaptorXL-200 said:

that flash pass is a joke. Me and the wife were buckled into a ride and got kicked out of our seat 3 times for a flash pass person.

At this point, you just lost any credibility. Sorry, but this did NOT happen. Flash Pass is merged into the line before the station.

In the more believable event that these were disability passes, again, that is still FALSE. If there is a disability pass, you are asked to wait an additional train ahead of time, or they just put the guests on before they even open the airgates.

Your notion that you boarded the rides and closed your restraints, and were then told to get back in line, that is Grade A BS.

Go to a sporting event next time. Enjoy the $50 parking, 3 hour duration, and ads on top of ads.

This is my favorite thread in a long, long time.

On a serious note, I find the way people have become increasingly adverse to advertising to be intetresting. We expect to skip commercials on our DVR, block them on our browser, bitch about them in real life.

I guess I'm not that sensitive to it and it strikes me as a little funny how increasingly angry people seem to get over advertising.

Except when Don Draper's involved, then people love it!

Tekwardo said:

Would you rather pay $90 to get in or $50-60 and have ads?

I think you and I both know that this is not the choice that the park has to make, or everyone would.

I was obviously trying to be as extreme as what I was responding to, but the reality is, additional revenue streams work to keep prices lower.

Do they, though? Wouldn't the cost of a ticket be much more closely tied to the market's willingness to pay for x number of tickets?